The Chicago Architecture Biennial has announced that curator and educator Sepake Angiama, and architect and urbanist Paulo Tavares will be joining the curatorial team of the 2019 Biennial. This is a great move as in the past two editions there have only been artistic directors leading the helm of the showcase. The co-curators will be working with the Yesomi Umolu, who was selected as the Artistic Director last March.
Angiama, who recently served as Head of Education for Documenta 14, has devised education programs for a number of leading international institutions, including Tate Modern & Hayward Gallery, London. Her work centers around discursive practices, the social framework, and how we shape and form our experiences in understanding the world. As a recent fellow at basis voor actuele kunst, she conducted a year-long research into intersectional feminism and science fiction.
Brazilian architect Paulo Tavares’ work is concerned with the relations between conflict and space as they intersect within the multi-scalar arrangements of cities, territories and ecologies. He is currently developing a project on the violence of planning and the politics of ecology in Amazonia at the PhD Program of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, UK.
The two both have international, research-based practices that look deeply at how architecture reflects social structures, complimenting Yesomi Umolu’s focus on the politics of the built environment. I hope that these three powerhouses can bring a discourse to the architecture community that moves beyond research into the worlds of real global issues and impacting those in need of architectural interventions.
Richelle Sibolboro 